WPIC is a digital commerce and technology agency that helps global brands enter, scale, and manage their e-commerce operations in Asian markets. The first thing to understand about the booming Chinese marketplace, said McMath, is the channel mix. Less than 18% of consumer sales in the U.S. are happening online, so the majority of the market is offline. On the other hand, 51% of consumer spending is online.
“But it’s also a market where Facebook is blocked, Google is blocked, Amazon has no market share, and so there’s a set of unique platforms within the Alibaba and Jingdong and WeChat ecosystem and Douyin, the sister company to TikTok Shop, that are really owning the share of consumer attention and consumer wallet that a brand needs to be able to activate and launch and understand to ultimately win a consumer in that market,” McMath told us.
The nutraceutical and biotics opportunities
Speaking at Probiota Americas in Vancouver on June 8, McMath told attendees that cross-border e-commerce and social commerce dominate China’s digital retail landscape, and the online nutraceutical market in China was worth US$17 billion in 2025 and posted 14% growth from 2024-25. China is the second largest nutraceutical market in the world, trailing the U.S.
Zooming in on probiotics, and these rank among China’s top supplement categories, with only fish oil, calcium and multivitamins ahead of them.
The cross-border e-commerce market was valued at US$566 million in 2025, with 20% year-over-year growth, added McMath. Tmall had 42.2% of the market share, closely followed by Douyin with 40.9%.
And the vast majority (90%) of gut health probiotics on Tmall, for example, are high dose, clocking in at over 10 billion CFUS. The majority (72%) are also formulated with over nine strains.
“Post-COVID, there’s the wave of health and wellness and interest for healthy living – healthy eating, healthy consumption, healthy supplementation, gut health, microbiome education – has really soared,” said McMath. “So, everything from longevity to beauty within to the more broader health space, we’ve seen some really fast-growing trends for brands to take advantage of.”
The domestic vs foreign balance
WPIC data reveals that over 54% of consumer spending within health supplements from Chinese consumers is on foreign brands versus domestic Chinese brands, so the preference is leaning now towards foreign brands, he said.
And leading the charge are Australian and American, but domestic Chinese brands are very competitive, he added. “They have obviously a significant market share on their own, but the preference is definitely for foreign brands.”
Success for foreign brands in that market starts with a great business plan, a great strategy, said McMath.
“You can take these big numbers within health supplements, but ultimately that needs to boil down to an individual product and SKU at a particular price point, targeted to particular consumer, so really first and foremost, understanding like what is the product, what is the value proposition, what does that look like specifically in Asia, and how can they ultimately win,” he said. “And then we’re an operator, so we do everything from the import, the logistics, the warehousing, the marketing, the translation, everything required for them to be able to get product into the market, and then most importantly, get capital out of that market.”
Watch the video for the full interview.
